Writing Podcast Episode 730: Kate Forsyth goes behind the scenes of her new book, 'The Changeling'

Now, there's a moment I have with writers that I've kind of [laughs] come to look forward to in a slightly odd way.

I'll be going through someone's manuscript, and I'll say, "You know, are you aware that you've used the word just 11 times just on this page? Just on this page." And there's always a pause, right? And then without fail, they usually say something like, "Oh, no.

I do that everywhere, don't I?" Yes, you do.

We all do.

Maybe not the word just, but everyone has a tell word, you know? We, it's, it's the little word that your hand puts down while your brain is off thinking about the actual sentence.

Just.

So for some people it's just, or somehow, or slightly, or began to, or sort of.

Y- they're completely invisible to the person who wrote them because, you know, by then they've stopped being words and turned into a bit of a tick.

Mine is actually, and I just gave up fighting it years ago.

It turns up in my emails, my texts, quite possibly what I'm about to say at the start of this episode, and if you spot it, uh, please keep that to yourself.

[laughs] I also overuse the word that.

Yeah.

And when I'm writing scripts, I overuse the word absolutely.

So I make a really conscious decision to keep an eye on those words and cull them when I need to.

I may not cull every single one of them because they're obviously part of my vernacular, but I try not to overuse them.

But I don't go on about this for the sake of tidiness, right? Most of these words l- kind of let the air out of whatever they're attached to.

Um, "She was a little annoyed," is a weaker sentence than, "She was annoyed." "He began to walk towards the door," is a longer and just much more kind of convoluted way of saying, "He walked to the door." Take the padding out, and the meaning has to hold itself up, and nine times out of 10 it can.

And this is a favorite sort of editing job actually [laughs] because it doesn't need taste, or, or distance, or three weeks in a bottom drawer.

It just needs the find function, like find and replace or find and delete.

So try this.

Open your document, hit find, and search for one suspect word.

Just one.

Yes.

Yeah, yes, I heard it too.

[laughs] Look at the number that comes back, and have a small lie-down.